5. How could the universal Soul simultaneously be the soul of yourself
and of other persons? Might she be the soul of one person by her lower
strata, and that of somebody else by her higher strata? To teach such
a doctrine would be equivalent to asserting that the soul of Socrates
would be alive while being in a certain body, while she would be
annihilated (by losing herself within the universal Soul) at the very
moment when (as a result of separation of the body) she had come into
what was best (in the intelligible world). No, none of the true beings
perishes. Not even the intelligences lose themselves up there (in the
divine Intelligence), because they are not divided as are bodies,
and each subsists in her own characteristics, to their differences
joining that identity which constitutes "being." Being located below
the individual intelligences to which they are attached, individual
souls are the "reasons" (born) of the intelligences, or more developed
intelligences; from being but slightly manifold, they become very much
so, while remaining in communion with the slightly manifold beings.
As however they tend to introduce separation in these less divisible
beings (that is, intelligences), and as nevertheless they cannot attain
the last limits of division, they simultaneously preserve both their
identity and difference. Each one remains single, and all together form
a unity.